Which Bills are Bad?

There's an old joke about politicians:

How can you tell if a politician is lying?
He/she is speaking.

Now, obviously that is a tad bit of hyperbole, but it's amusing because of the hint of truth in it. People have come to accept that their "representatives" are lying virtually all the time, and clearly more often than they are telling the truth. To that end, I'd like to propose an additional variation of the above observation, with respect to Congressional legislation:

How can you tell if a bill is bad for the country?
Congress is voting on it.

Consider, for example, the latest gigantic pork bill proposed by the Democrats, as an effective rider to the continuing resolution to keep the government operating beyond Dec 18. Now, in a sane world there would be some rule, or procedure, or perhaps even modicum of decency to separate gigantic pork bills from the simple "keep the government operating" resolution, so that conscientious legislators wouldn't be forced to hand out billions of dollars to special-interest pork projects just to not shutdown the government; however, these are the Democrats we're talking about, and they're a special kind of reprehensible.

Really, I wish we had enough decent representatives to vote down this monstrosity, and call out the Democrats for shutting down the government. It seems like we've had nothing but years of capitulation to "just a little more bad" legislative bills and practices, and we've reached the point where you look at the process with fresh eyes, and think, "how did we get to this horrifically bad state?" How did we arrive at the point where handing out billions in public money to special interest pork payouts allocated behind closed doors by mafia-style corrupt thugs was a foregone prerequisite of just maintaining a functional government?

Our government needs a massive enema.